[ Music ]
>> Paul Woodruff: [Applause].
Welcome to Game Changers.
I'm Paul Woodruff.
I've taught philosophy at the University of Texas for 39 years.
And for the last 24 of those years I have been involved in one level or another of academic management.
I was chair of the Philosophy Department for 3 years.
I directed the Plan II [phonetic] Honor's Program for 15.
And for the last 6 years I've been Dean of the Fledgling School of Undergraduate Studies.
Which is a wonderful unit that oversees the core curriculum general education, the Freshman Experience, and many other things.
And somehow this management experience prepared me for the moment when I started work as a scholar on the story of Ajax and Odysseus.
Because then I had this moment of revelation.
I recognized these people.
They worked for me.
There was an Ajax working for me -- at least one -- and there was an Odysseus.
And by gum they fought and hated each other, just as in the myth.
And presented to me the kind of problem in justice and leadership that Agamemnon faced on the plain outside Troy, where he was waging the war against Troy.
Now the story, as we pick it up, is this.
The Greek Army has been outside Troy now for 9 years waging battle almost every day against the Trojan forces that sally forth from the Citadel [pause].
In the middle of every battle, where the fighting is the most fierce, there is Ajax.
Ajax is the largest soldier in the Greek army.
He's huge.
And he's also energetic.
He does the work of 4 regular infantrymen.
And besides that he carries a large shield.
He is the best in terms of strength.
He is the best in terms of courage.
And he is the best in terms of loyalty to his friends in the army.
And wherever he is needed, there he is.
So you, Agamemnon, you're the commander, but you were at risk.
Your life was hanging by a thread when the Trojans stormed down on the beach and threatened to burn the ships.
And Ajax was there to save your life.
And Odysseus, don't hide behind the person sitting next to you.
You know I saw you skulking behind Ajax's shield when you were tired and frightened and you needed to take a break during the battle.
Many of you remember having been saved by Ajax.
He was always there for you.
Now who could ask for more from a soldier than Ajax gave?
Well Agamemnon could ask for more, and I'll tell you why.
This war has gone on for 9 full years.
And we're no closer to victory than we were the day we started.
Yes, with Ajax's help we've killed a lot of Trojans, but the reinforcements are trickling down from the hill every night and sneaking into the Citadel.
It doesn't appear we're going to win the war this way.
Maybe we're fighting it the wrong way.
Maybe we have the wrong kind of hero in Ajax.
Wonderful as he is, he doesn't seem to be ideal.
9 years of bloody war, and we're no further along.
Think about our own recent wars, and you might ask the same question.
Do we have the right heroes?
Are we fighting the war in the right way?
Well luckily we Greeks have another hero and his name is Odysseus.
He is very, very different from Ajax.
He's not very big.
He's not terribly loyal.
In fact, sometimes we're afraid he might go over to the Trojans.
He's moderately brave, but not especially brave.
What makes Odysseus special is that he is really, really, really smart and inventive.
And we who know the full story know that he's the one who's going to invent the Trojan horse.
He's going to be the one who comes up with the idea that changes the battlefield in favor of the Greeks.
Without Odysseus, this war will go on forever.
Now you can imagine Ajax and Odysseus turning up in a lot of different venues other than the Greek army or the American army.
For that matter, I've certainly seen Ajax and Odysseus in the American army.
I've also seen them in the Philosophy Department.
I've seen them in the business world and I hear they're all over the place when I talk to friends about this myth.
So let's start with the Philosophy Department, or some -- let's take it away from philosophy.
We'll make it the department of X, Y, Z. There is in this department an Ajax who teaches all the courses he's asked to teach.
He serves on every committee.
Writes every report that needs to be written.
He's always there when he's wanted.
And there's Odysseus.
He's usually late for meetings.
If he's asked to teach a new course, he says, sorry I'm too busy.
But he is writing a set of very clever articles that are being published in top journals.
He is adding to the glory of the department.
He is going to be the one who raises the rank of the department.
And he's the one who's negotiating with the University of Troy to get a much higher salary over there if we don't match it.
So you know the outcome.
Odysseus is going to be paid maybe twice as much as Ajax for being disloyal.
Or so it will seem to Ajax.
And Ajax is going to get angry.
Or you can imagine a similar story in a bank.
We don't want to lose Odysseus, because he might invent the Trojan horse derivative investment vehicle.
Which will clean the clock of the Bank of Troy, unless that is, he goes over to the Bank of Troy, in which case our goose is cooked.
So we have to keep Odysseus.
On the other hand, the workhorse of the unit is Ajax.
How do we balance these things?
Well Agamemnon summoned a panel of judges from the army, chosen by lot.
And he had each side make a speech to exactly the same time limit.
The judges conferred.
They met. And they decided that the most valuable player -- the one that would get the big prize -- and there's only one big prize, that would be Odysseus.
Ajax, after 9 years of bleeding for his friends on the battlefield, suddenly wakes up to realize they have been taking him for granted.
And he feels really badly cheated.
Because for one thing, he doesn't feel that this contest, though it was fair -- there's nothing unfair about it.
It was unbiased.
The jury was chosen by law; they had equal time to make their speeches.
Somehow he doesn't feel it was the right contest.
Now a tug of war would have been okay.
I would have won that; I'm bigger than he is.
But it wasn't a tug of war, it was a panel with judges chosen by lot.
So it didn't work out that way.
Ajax flies into a rage, deeply feeling a sense of injustice.
And two things that I'd like you to take away from this story at this point, one of them is that frequently on a team,
we have people who make uniquely different contributions.
And those contributions cannot be carefully measured against one another.
We can't monetize what Ajax does relative to what Odysseus does.
Somehow we have to make a judgment that they both feel is just.
Justice is felt.
Well now we're going to take a commercial break.
And when we come back I'll talk about what went wrong and then maybe about how it could have been prevented [music].
Thank you very much.
[ Music and applause ]